Relay

What is Relay and what is it for?

Relay is a private chat app built with Holochain for Volla phones and desktop computers. It was made so people could message each other directly from their own devices, finding one another by public key instead of a phone number, without a company holding the conversation.

The repository's README names the project Relay. It was built as a private chat app for Volla, a privacy-focused phone maker, and was first described publicly in 2024 when Volla announced that Holochain apps would be preloaded on its Quintus handset. Contributors from Terran Collective worked on it alongside Holochain's own team.

Relay was a chat app for phones and desktop computers where the conversation belonged to the people in it. Messages were encrypted, and people found each other by a public key rather than a phone number, so a conversation did not depend on holding an account with a company. Rather than one operator storing everyone's messages, the data sat with the participants' own devices.

First-party coverage described one-to-one and group conversations, contacts reached by public key, and sharing of photos and other files. It was announced as part of what would ship on the Volla Quintus phone — an example of chat running on a phone without a conventional messaging account. Background is in Holochain's Relay write-up, and the build steps are in the repository.

From 3 public sources, checked 23 September 2026.